Concerns about the Ministry of Health and Southern District Health Board's ability to keep track of some documents related to a multimillion-dollar dispute have been raised with Chief Archivist Marilyn Little.
During correspondence about requests for official information on the dispute between South Link Health and the Southern District Health Board, confusion emerged around documents held in an earthquake-damaged building in Christchurch by the ministry's audit and compliance unit.
The DHB had referred the dispute to the unit in late 2010 for investigation and recommendations on how to proceed.
Documents held in the Charles Luney building were rescued before it was demolished, according to the ministry, but nobody at the ministry was able to identify what the documents were.
As part of an OIA complaint investigation, Ombudsman Prof Ron Paterson sought further comment from the ministry's then chief legal adviser, Phil Knipe, on this issue.
Mr Knipe's response did not shed any light on it.
He said everything located and held by the unit was located and provided to him and had been taken into account in the handling of OIA requests.
In his final opinion on the complaint, Prof Paterson said "you may wish to seek the advice of the Chief Archivist in respect of your queries regarding the physical retention and disposal of public records''.
In his opinion on the complaints about the DHB's refusals to provide official information, he made a similar comment about referral to the Chief Archivist over record-keeping practices.
The DHB, under Prof Paterson's direction, released a 2009 statement of claim document, but although the document listed 30 attachments, many of them letters written to and from the Otago DHB, only four of them were provided.
When this was queried, Prof Paterson said the board had confirmed all attachments still held had been provided.
The version of the claim document released had been provided to the board in 2014 and had not included all the attachments.
The DHB has since agreed to provide the attachments, which it expects will be with seven boxes of file documents related to the dispute returned by advisers.
It estimates it could take a staff member about 20 hours to locate all of them.
A Department of Internal Affairs spokesman said Archives NZ was assessing the matters raised in terms of the Public Records Act and would be in touch when it had "determined its response''.
